August Preview

Oh hey there, August, I didn’t see you there. I was just trying to skirt my overenthusiasm for ‘Guardians of The Galaxy’ by hiding at a folk music festival and mustn’t have noticed you were hanging out there too. Not to drum up the old cliches, but how the heck have you been? It’s been, what, a year since I saw you last, right? What have you been up to, you old rogue? Films? Nah, I’m not full to the brim with potentially delightful cinematic treats to see off 2014’s summer season, I don’t know where you came up with- oh, sorry, YOU’RE full to brim of- oh right, well that makes more sense. Sorry about that August, please do go on…

August 1st – Mood Indigo

Every now and then some piece of cinema comes along being touted as “The Frenchest Thing Ever”, so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, 2014’s entry for “Frenchest Thing Ever”: ‘Mood Indigo’! Michel Gondry (director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Science of Sleep”) tackles an adapation of French jazz musician, inventor and all-round polymath Boris Vian’s surrealist novel ‘L’Ecume des Jours’ with Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris in the leads. If all these French names have pinged harmlessly off your jaded film buff exterior, then please gaze at yonder trailer and submit to the aesthetic splendour that is Audrey Tau- er, I mean, Michel Gondry’s art style. Yes.

‘The Inbetweeners’ are a big deal. They used to be a bigger deal when their telly-show was still on, but they’re still enough of a deal to get away with one more jaunt around the cinema block. They’re still so much of a deal that when you say the phrase “I have never seen any of ‘The Inbetweeners’” people may recoil from you incredulously. Ahem. I have never seen any of ‘The Inbetweeners’. Okay, maybe some clips here and there. What snippets I have gleamed from both the show and their first film were honestly giggle-inducing, so whether the gang’s trip to Australia can deliver the goods once again, well… that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

I’m honestly convinced Sylvester Stallone doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘expendable’. We’re on our third one of these films with the biggest cast ever, so unless in this alleged final hurrah our videogame beat-em-up roster of characters do actually selectively snuff it I’m taking Stallone’s dictionary from him. Or sending him more. I haven’t decided yet. Sure our too-long-a-list-of-names look like they’re having fun going after Mel ‘I was crazy all along’ Gibson, but just because something looks fun to make doesn’t make it fun to watch, eh Mrs Browns Boys? Did I just compare a gaggle of varyingly-aged muscles to a man dressed as a granny? So what if I did?

I don’t know what intrigues me more about ‘The Rover’, that it’s brought to us by David Michôd (famous for 2010’s Australian crime-a-rama ‘Animal Kingdom’), that it has more than a passing resemblance to the first ‘Mad Max’ film, or that Robert Pattinson looks to have truly hung up his sparkles in favour of grime, a southern drawl and a beard. After Pattinson and his crew steal a car belonging to psychotic drifter Guy Pearce, said nutcase kidnaps said Pattinson on a revenge mission to get said motor back in a colour-drained, post-apocalyptic Australia.Or is it pre-apocalypse? Either way it looks pretty dang gorgeous.

The other ‘The’ film of August the 15th 2014 couldn’t be further from it’s Australian counterpart, and it’s not because they’re not speaking to each other due to a falling out. ‘The Congress’ is Ari ‘Waltz with Bashir’ Folman’s newest chunk of cinema that has Robin Wright (playing herself) get uploaded onto some kind of ethereal database as a final job for her ailing son, with naturally surreal and mesmerising consequences. If you happen to have seen ‘Waltz with Bashir’ you’ll know Folman has a knack for making stunning imagery and this one is no different. Just gander at the trailer found below and make a “what did I just see?” face. You won’t have to try hard, trust me.

Formerly known as ‘The F Word’, ‘What If’ can be lazily described as ‘What Harry Potter did next, after, well, y’know, ‘The Woman in Black’ and that other one, y’know, ‘Kill Your Darlings’”. Well I said lazy, not punchy. Any the way, this rom-com sees Daniel Radcliffe as a down-on-his-luck former medical student accidentally drumming up a friendship with Zoe Kazan’s animator, Chantry. Despite the constant presence of Chantry’s live-in boy-person, feels develop and the rom-com journey beginneth. Predictably there’s awkward staring, unhelpful-yet-sincere friends, party scenes and running for your loved one because OH GOOD GOD THEY’RE GETTING ON THE PLANE! STOP THEM! Hey, some people are into that.

Right, let’s engage in a brief game of hypothetical movie madness. So imagine if, IF, Luc Besson (he who by his grace gave us ‘Leon’ and ‘The Fifth Element’) had made the cure for insomnia that is ‘Limitless’ but instead of average-bland-white-male Bradley Cooper we have charisma-bomb-shell Scarlett Johannson and chuck out a deflating Robert De Niro in favour of a whole mess of deranged Taiwanese gangsters. Are you imagining it? Well imagine no more as that is precisely the gist of ‘Lucy’. Sure, Besson’s last film ‘The Family’ had all the zing and pep of wallpaper paste, but armed with a more fantastical idea Besson can make pretty fun cinema. Let’s hope this is that.

I don’t want to cause any kind of ageist alarm, but the first ‘Sin City’ came out 9 years ago. It’s no surprise that in those 9 years since the unashamedly pulpy, overstylized adapation of Frank Miller’s borderline-mysogynous graphic novel emerged, the movie-making landscape has changed. I know that demand for a follow-up had been none-more-vocal for a while, but are we as a cinema-going public still enraptured with the idea of an ensemble cast of gritty men in suits and women in skimpy leathers growling and murdering the cuss out of each other in a polarising black-and-white comic-book styling? If we weren’t then we probably wouldn’t have gone so nuts when the trailer landed. Bring out the violence! Bring out the leather! Bring out the interweaved stories that sees our leads join forces to bring down a maniacal Eva Green! Bring ’em out I say!

And so we wrap up August with our third comedy, our second rom-com and our first film about abortion all rolled into one. ‘Obvious Child’, as well as being a Paul Simon track, follows Jenny Slate as comedian Donna Hern, who upon finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand has to decide whether or not to keep said baby. The fact that we can have frank, honest and funny films about discussions such as abortion versus the potential of single parenthood shows just how mature and developed we’ve become as a society. Yes, we may decide to pepper such discussions with jokes abut farts and boobs but if you’ve got a problem with that then that’s on you, Admiral Serious-Arse.

A jack-of-all-trades, Scott has been everything from an English teacher to a stock room clerk to an open mic host to a mixologist. He currently spends his time playing live music in Newcastle, watching cartoons and annoying everyone about The Wire. It was a brilliant show, by the way. You should go watch it.

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3 Comments

Roger Burr says:August 6, 2014 at 12:05 pm

I want to see The Rover the most. After Animal Kingdom I will watch anything they make. I’m not sold on Robert Pattinson being in it, but I truly believe he has potential to be a good actor, aside from twilight and such. Anyways I am also looking forward to Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Lucy, and maybe Expendables 3 mainly for the laugh factor.